Qualcomm: plenty life left in featurephones

Smartphone shipments are constantly on the rise and expected to surpass featurephones as early as 2012. But Qualcomm reckons there’s life in the old dogs yet.

Liat Ben-Zur, Qualcomm’s senior director of business development, says: "Obviously there's a big trend - everyone is moving towards smartphones but I believe by 2014 that 54 per cent of phones are still going to be feature phones.

"So there's a reality here that in the market there's a massive space for featurephones.”

There’s an insane amount of Qualcomm Snapdragon devices in production – around 250 smartphones and 40 tablets – but the San Diegans suggest their own operating system, Brew, will breathe new life into featurephones.

"Brew is really meeting a need in the featurephone space with some sophisticated features and a usability that can rival some of the smartphone experiences, at a much lower price point."

The ironically-named entry-level HTC Smart is one such phone. Indeed, at first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was running Android, but delve deeper and you’ll discover it’s a rather stripped down - though far from terrible - imposter.

Agree.
Unless something weird happens in the battery department, some people will leave smartphones and go back to feature phones.
And of course, cough hush hush, we can't forget the '3rd world'...oops, emerging markets. People who are not constantly near a pc to sync, people who literally would have to sell a kidney to afford an ipad.
And I do wonder how many users actually need/use true multitasking etc...